The Old Shebbearians' Association

Tragic Last Flight of Pilot Officer Horace Badge

BOMBER CREW ‘VICTIMS OF IMPLACABLE FATE’

 

Late on a warm July night in 1943, nine heavily-laden Avro Lancaster bombers from 207 Squadron took off from RAF Langar in Nottinghamshire.

Over the English Channel  they joined up with other groups of aircraft from other squadrons and other bases until eventually nearly 300 were assembled into a stream of bombers, heading south.

The target was Turin, a centre of Italian industry and an important railway junction.

Lancaster ED412 from Langar had a crew of seven. Powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, it carried a 4,000 lb blast bomb, 204 small incendiaries and enough fuel for the long return journey.

The oldest on board was the Observer, aged 32 - the youngest was the Pilot and Captain, Old Shebbearian Horace Badge, a farmer’s son.

He left Shebbear in 1941, joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and trained in England and Canada. Newly commissioned as a Pilot Officer, this was his fourth operational flight.

Just two years previously he had sung in the school choir and played the violin. His ambition was to study accountancy and perhaps enter a bank. On the night of July 12/13 his duty was to fly the greatest heavy bomber of its time on a dangerous mission. He was 20 years old.

The route took the Lancasters over the Somme and on to Lake Annecy. There RAF pathfinder aircraft were to drop flares to keep the bombers clear of neutral Switzerland. They were then to fly at 20,000 ft over the Alps to the left of Mont Blanc and on to the target 100 miles away.

More than six decades later, the story has emerged of what happened on that fateful night.

The bombers ran into appalling weather over France. Electric storms and heavy thunderclouds made navigation very difficult. More than 100 found themselves entering Swiss airspace. Bombs fell in error on eight locations.

Swiss ground forces, manning three batteries of 75 mm anti-aircraft guns in the Jura mountains, fired a  barrage of 400 shells. The intention was to force the British intruders away from Swiss territory as quickly as possible, but ED412 was inadvertently hit.

Mortally damaged and in atrocious weather, it crashed into Le Grammont, a mountain above the town of Le Bouveret at the eastern end of Lake Geneva.

Eyewitness reports at the time told of the bomber, wing span 102 feet, trailing black smoke as it broke through the cloud cover over Vevey on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. It circled twice, the second time lower, then came a brilliant white flash, followed by an explosion and flames.

“The light flashed to the ground and suddenly tall flames rose up in the forest 400 to 500 metres above the western end of Bouveret,” said the reports.

“A terrible explosion followed. It could be seen as far as Vevey and district, awakening a fair number of inhabitants and shaking the windows.

“The rush of flames was so fierce that several windows were broken in Le Bouveret

“In Vevey itself, three big windows of the Hotel des 3 Couronnes were shattered. One of the guests, the Aga Khan, was hit on the head by flying glass.”

A huge mirror in the hall of the Hotel Eden was shattered. At the cooperative store other large mirrors were broken.

The Swiss authorities ensured that the funeral of the airmen – “victims of implacable fate” – was a splendid and moving occasion.

Police were out in force to control the huge crowd which turned up at St Martin’s Cemetery three days later. Also being buried was the crew of another Lancaster which had flown into electricity pylons.

“Innumerable” wreaths were laid out on trestles by the grave. They had been sent from every part of Switzerland and from every British community in the country. The Aga Khan attended and also sent a wreath.

A battalion brass band played Beethoven’s Funeral March. At the head of the funeral procession were members of the British Legation in Berne.

 They included His Excellency Mr Clifford Norton, CMG, CVP, Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Minister; Air Commodore F.M.F. West, VC, MC, Air Attache; Colonel H.A.Cartwright, MC, Military Attache, and Major H.N.Fryer, Assistant Military Attache.

Also attending were representatives of the RAF, the British Legion, and the Greek, Belgium, Dutch, Yugoslav, US and Palestinian communities.

Six English priests conducted the service.

Then, as a Swiss newspaper reported ”Before the reading of the Gospels, English soldiers (internees) and Swiss soldiers took their places at the foot and head of the fourteen coffins. They are at attention. The band plays God Save the King; the slabs supporting the coffins are lifted, the soldiers slowly let them down on ropes to the bottom of the communal graves. The Absolution is given by Father Kurfurst, then Mr Legg and the British Minister perform the symbolic gesture of throwing handfuls of earth on to the coffins.

“Three salvos fired by a Swiss military detachment frighten the birds and the small children (whom one might have wished to have been elsewhere than at a cemetery). Trumpets sound and the ceremony ends with the laying of magnificent wreaths.

“Impressed by so much simplicity, coupled with an absence of words which said more than a thousand speeches, the crowd slowly withdraws as the military attaches come and bow before the graves where a quantity of flowers, simple bunches, are piled up on the ground, an expression of the warmth of feeling towards the victims of war.”

It is unlikely that Horace’s parents, Ernest and Florence Badge, then farming on the Devon/Cornwall border were told about the splendour and dignity of the funeral. They were certainly not told that Horace had been shot down by mistake, just that the aircraft had encountered bad weather and hit the top of a mountain.

Mrs Badge never got over the death of her son. The family moved to Camelford and shortly afterwards his mother suffered a stroke. She died in 1972; his father in 1976.

In 1993, Horace’s niece Mrs Christine Dashwood, of Wadebridge, attended the dedication of a memorial to the crew, erected close to Lake Geneva by the people of Le Bouveret.

Mrs Dashwood, married coincidentally to an Old Shebbearian, Alexander Dashwood (1965-69) said: “I understand that Horace was a sensitive boy. Apparently, on his last home leave, he made the effort of calling on everyone he knew, as if to make the point that he might not come back.

“He had no ambition to farm but wanted to study accountancy and make a career in banking. His father was of the stiff-upper lip kind but his mother never ever recovered from her loss.”

The raid on Turin caused huge damage with 101 people reported to have been killed and 203 injured. In return, the RAF lost 13 aircraft and 90 aircrew; another 10 became prisoners of war. Among those also killed was Wing Commander John Nettleton, Commanding Officer of 44 Squadron who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for taking part in a daylight raid on Augsburg.

** The OSA acknowledges with gratitude permission to use the painstaking research over many years   carried out by Jim Wright, the son of the ED412’s Observer/Air Bomber Sgt Arthur Charles Wright. It was not until after the war that his family discovered where the crew was buried. The full, illustrated account of his investigation into the crash can be found at www.207squadron.rafinfo.org.uk/lebouveret  He also recommends the book Infringing Neutrality – The RAF in Switzerland 1940-1945, published in 2006 by Tempus Publishing.

HEA  

ends

FIRST  AWARD ‘IN 2007’ BUT MEMORIAL FUND NEEDS MORE GIFTS

 

 Horace Badge was not the youngest of Shebbear’s 86 Old Boys who give their lives on active service. The last, Midshipman Michael O’Driscoll (1958-61) was also 20 when killed in 1963 off the coast of Malaya by Indonesian insurgents while completing his training as a Royal Naval officer. He was Mentioned in Dispatches for his gallantry. The OSA has paid for a memorial plaque which was placed near the Rolls of Honours before the last Remembrance Day service at Shebbear.

Francis Barnard and William Laramy were still both in their teens when they lost their lives in the same month in 1945 as the war in Europe neared its end.

Members of the OSA can honour the memory of all those who laid down their lives by contributing to the OS War Memorial Fund though a one-off payment, standing order or bequest. The fund has made steady progress since its relaunch but more donations are urgently needed.

The Trustees report: By 15 August, 45 Old Shebbearians had donated £5,595 to the Scholarship Appeal launched in June 2005. Of these, 22 have pledged themselves to give a total of £1,906 this year and in each succeeding year; £5,000 of the £5,595 has been invested in an M&G  Charibond . This investment should provide an annual income of £300 to which should be added the annual income of £400 from the Trustees’ holding with the Charities Investment Fund (COIF). The three amounts of £1,906, £300 and £400 will thus produce an annual income of some £2,600.

In addition, the tax refund in respect of Gift Aided contributions will augment the annual income. This year the trustees have been able to claim the sum of £1,145 which represents tax refunds on a number of one-off gifts as well as annual gifts. Unless substantially more annual gifts are received (over and above the £1,906 already pledged) some £500 only will be recoverable annually under Gift Aid.

The Trustees are very conscious that the Fund was set up in 1924 as a memorial to the 48 Old Shebbearians who lost their lives in the 1914-18 War with the object of providing some financial assistance to Old Boys embarking on course of higher education, preference being given to the sons and brothers of those who had served in the War. Changing circumstances have encouraged the OSA to enlarge the Fund’s remit to allow support to pupils at the school.

 

Although an award of £350 was made at the January 2006 reunion to Rebecca Betambeau, a music scholarship student at the Birmingham Conservatoire, the Trustees do not envisage making future awards for further education, preferring to use the annual income to fund scholarships at Shebbear.

By September 2007 the Trustees hope to be in a position to award a scholarship of something in the region of £2,500 a year. Whilst this would be a modest beginning, it is necessary to raise further funds if assistance is to be given to those who otherwise would not benefit from an education at Shebbear. Therefore the Trustees urge all Old Shebbearians who have not already contributed to the Fund to match the generosity of those who have already responded to the Appeal.

Standing Orders and Gift Aid forms are available either from the Fund’s Honorary Treasurer, David Shorney, 81 Tarnwood Park, London SE9 5PD, or from the OSA Honorary Secretary, David Haley, Cold Norton Farm, Ockham Lane, Cobham, Surrey KT11 1LW.

 

End  

 
OSA Hon. Sec. is David Haley, Cold Norton Farm, Ockham Lane, Cobham, Surrey KT11 1LW
Tel: +44 (0)1932 863746 Fax: +44 (0)1932 866709 Website: www.oldshebbearian.co.uk